Author: Cara Giaimo / Source: Atlas Obscura
The most famous bison in Manitoba is named Freddy. He lives in Lorette, a small city southeast of Winnipeg, and he likes to hop his fence and explore the neighborhood. He escapes often enough that he’s gained a dedicated following, a line of rebellious sweatshirts featuring the slogan “Run Freddy Run,” and fawning press coverage everywhere from the CBC to Maclean’s Magazine.
“We don’t even know if it’s the same bison or a different bison each time,” explains Kevin Patton, who first gave Freddy his name, and created the Facebook group dedicated to his exploits. “We just named the escapee Freddy, and he’s become our town mascot.”
Now, he’s also a muse. Freddy’s story and a parallel one—about some American bison who refused to be shipped to Canada in the early 1900s—were recently herded together in an unexpected form: a choral piece. Written by the composer Eliot Britton and commissioned and performed by the Manitoban vocal ensemble Camerata Nova, “Run, Freddy, Run!” premiered on Saturday, April 28, 2018. It was part of the group’s Red River Song concert, a celebration of the area’s Metís culture.
As Britton explains, Manitoba’s love for bison goes back centuries. Starting in the 1600s, French Canadian and Scottish fur trappers came to modern-day Manitoba, which was then known as the Red River Valley, to hunt bison. Many of them married First Nations or Inuit women, and started families.
Their descendants call themselves Metís. “They created these mixed communities who developed their own distinct culture,” says Britton, who is Metís himself. “They founded the province of Manitoba the way we know it now… [and] bison were their primary food source, [as well as] a cultural symbol.”In the 21st century, this attachment manifests in different ways. The University of Manitoba’s mascot is a perpetually charging bison. A gentler cartoon one, named Morty, shills for a wireless company. “There’s so much bison branding that you don’t realize until you leave and come back,” Britton says. Meanwhile, the…
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